


the lord regent's travelling circus

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, five things that never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 18:45:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four things that never happened to Aral Vorkosigan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the lord regent's travelling circus

**Author's Note:**

> For vampire_kitten

On a quiet desert day, between cartographies, Cordelia is roused out of a sound sleep by a knock on her apartment door.

It's him. Swaying very gently, he merely stares at her for a while. She stares back.

"Are you," and she stops. _Staying? Crazy? A figment of my imagination?_ "Drunk?"

"It's a possibility I haven't quite ruled out, yes," he agrees. "Brandy and wormhole travel don't go together particularly well, it must be said."

"I think you'd better come in," she says, and shuts the door behind him. And then, "Are you planning to be here long?"

"I can make myself useful," he says, a little desperately. "I mean, I can't exactly join your military, and I'm not, a, er, scientist. I'm good at throwing people, though. Sometimes through walls."

"Are you really," she says, and kisses him, deeply, tasting the brandy in his mouth; brandy, and distance, and home.

*

Lord Vorkosigan is not interested in politics. He has retired with his offworlder wife and their young son, and they live a quiet life of seclusion at Vorkosigan Surleau.

It's the party line, and on the whole, it is toed by all members of the household. Young Piotr Miles, usually called Miles to distinguish him from the more senior bearer of the name, runs happily around the estate, taking great leaping dives into the lake and great diving leaps off his grandfather's horses. Lady Vorkosigan divides her time between keeping an eye on him and writing long research papers for a wide variety of Betan scientific journals, having become a prominent expert on Barrayaran avifauna.

Aral administers the district, in his own quiet way; he sorts out petty crime and boundary disputes and he does not learn to ride, much to his father's displeasure. It's possible, he thinks, they may have, all of them, found their peace. And the day that Gregor's body is found, floating small and broken, he gets quietly into a lightflyer and leaves it all behind.

*

The major flaw in Barrayaran military history is the way it tries to ascribe meaning to everything, when history is sometimes only a sequence of events, bloody, meaningless, that happened. All the talk of honour, and sacrifice, when even military sacrifice can be self-indulgent; harder by far to sacrifice a life rather than a death, the breath and the breadth of it, to what is greater than one man.

Love stories are the same, Aral thinks, only a little bitterly. In the cold white light of a winter morning, he is pulling clothes and boots swiftly off the floor, throwing off the clean white sheets. With only dawn as backlight, the man he leaves behind looks softly human – neither tortured madman nor mad torturer – and he could take credit for that, tell himself that he leaves that quietness behind him, an old lover with a shadow of old love. He's sure he keeps the edge off, at any rate. Burns off the nastier excesses.

But it chews them all up in the end, he thinks, suddenly, Barrayar, spitting present and future backwards into history, and maybe you look for comfort where you can find it, in bloodier intimacy than peace.

*

The noise alerts her, suddenly, to a presence other than her own. A quiet keening, an inhuman sound, and Ensign Dubauer rolls into view, eyes wide, staring, rolling back into his head. Commander Naismith has seen that look before – the look that says all reason and sanity have fled, leaving youthful ruin, soft-fluid mush.

A momentary rustle, a breaking of camouflage – and she sees the enemy captain, just for a moment, against the background of the canopy. Dubauer moans in pain. Cordelia smiles slightly and fires.


End file.
